![]() ![]() Nevertheless, Barton Fink is an unusually audacious movie for a major studio to release - not only because of its bizarre form and content, but also because the Coens had complete creative control. Considering the indebtedness of Barton Fink to Polanski pictures like Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant - in its black humor, treatment of confinement and loneliness, perverse evocations of everyday “normality,” creepy moods and hallucinatory disorientation, phantasmagoric handling of gore and other kinds of horror as shock effects, and even its careful use of ambiguous offscreen sounds - the group of awards should probably be viewed more as an act of self-congratulation than as an objective aesthetic judgment. The president of the Cannes jury was Roman Polanski, who took the job only after demanding that he be allowed to handpick his own jury members. Whether these awards will count for much in the more hidebound U.S. Last May it received the unprecedented honor of being awarded three top prizes at the Cannes film festival - for best picture, best director, and best actor (John Turturro) - which will undoubtedly help it commercially in Europe. As entertainment, Barton Fink is in some ways even better than Miller’s Crossing, though also just as adolescent and much less engaging when seen a second time. The movie’s arty surface fairly screams with significance, but the stylistic devices are designed for immediate consumption rather than being part of a coherent strategy. ![]() Unfortunately, the movie ultimately founders on the Coen’s primary impulses, which drive them to use a festival of fancy effects whatever their ambitions, midnight movies are still the brothers’ metier. Even if the film was soulless, it showed an obsession with its Hammett-derived male-bonding theme that suggested the Coens were aspiring to something more than crass entertainment for better or worse, it looked like art movies were their ultimate aim.īarton Fink confirms this impression with a vengeance. Unlike their earlier efforts, Miller’s Crossing was a commercial flop - an undeserved one, given its visual distinction and its strong performances. Historical and psychological veracity consisted basically of whatever they could get away with, based on the cynical assumption that their audience was every bit as devoid of interest in these matters as they were. On its own terms, Miller’s Crossing was the work of a pair of movie brats (both in their mid-30s) eager to show their emulation of Dashiell Hammett but, in spiky postmodernist fashion, almost totally indifferent to Hammett’s own period - except for what they could skim from superficial readings of R ed Harvest, The Glass Key, and a few secondary sources. In both craft and stylishness, Miller’s Crossing was another step forward, and even if I never really believed in either the period ambience or the characters - the dialogue bristled with anachronisms, and Albert Finney’s crime boss seemed much too blinkered and naive for someone who was supposed to be ruling a city - the film nevertheless demanded a certain attention. Raising Arizona may have had some of the same crass, gratuitous condescension toward its country characters as B lood Simple, but it also had a sweeter edge and more visual flair. The main sentiment I took away from Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing - their second and third efforts, both of which I stayed to the end of - was that at least each new Coen brothers movie was a discernible improvement over the last. I walked out of Blood Simple, their first feature. I’m not one of the Coen brothers’ biggest fans. With John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney, Tony Shalhoub, and Jon Polito. This review is also reprinted in my first collection, Placing Movies (1995). ![]()
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